The U.S. House of Representatives has agreed to the Senate-passed version of H.R. 1, the budget reconciliation bill, by a vote of 218 to 214. All members were present and all Republicans voted “yes” and all Democrats voted “no” except for Thomas Massie (R-KY) and Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA), who voted “no” as well.
The House went into session at 9 a.m. yesterday to begin consideration of the procedural matters to tee up a vote on the Senate bill, but the House got hung up between 1 p.m. yesterday and 3 a.m. this morning trying to round up the votes necessary to agree to the last procedural vote and the Senate bill itself. They were finally ready and began the one hour of debate on a motion to concur in the Senate amendment to H.R. 1 at 3:30 a.m. this morning.
But at the very end of debate, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) used his prerogative as a party floor leader to speak for as long as he wished and only have his speech counted as taking one minute of debate time (the “magic minute” only available to the Speaker, Majority Leader, and Minority Leader). This allowed Jeffries to stretch his one minute speech into 8 hours and 32 minutes, a new record.
After that, the Speaker closed debate, taking about 15 minutes, and then the vote on concurring in the Senate amendment to H.R. 1 began at 2:07 p.m. The vote was called at 2:30.
The White House has indicated that the President will sign the bill into law tomorrow (July 4), probably during the flyover of the B-2 bombers that dropped bunker-busting ordnance on Iranian nuclear facilities on June 22.
Congress will resume normal session next week, during which the House will continue appropriations bill markups and the Senate will consider the nomination of Bryan Bedford to be Administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration. (Bedford is second in the floor queue for next week and will come up once the nomination of Preston Griffith to be Under Secretary of Energy has been disposed of.)